Submitted by (lucia.rodrigues@ufrpe.br) on 2016-11-22T12:12:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria do Carmo da Silveira Xavier.pdf: 2981610 bytes, checksum: 8f296c9522d8a863e14670d85db94332 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-22T12:12:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria do Carmo da Silveira Xavier.pdf: 2981610 bytes, checksum: 8f296c9522d8a863e14670d85db94332 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-08-26 / In this research we investigate the construction of concepts, through technological material of artistic production of Conceptual Art, a transdisciplinary procedure with Science. It is confirmed the potential of continuing towards art, and its contribution to the learning of scientific concepts for students in high school. As expressive materials for the conceptual artistic productions, it is mentioned: the PET (Ethylene Politereftalate) and a bioplastics (made by students). These materials support the discussions and conceptual constructions about the curriculum content of high school to the Chemistry of Materials, to Biology and Ecology (environment), with the themes: polymers, synthetic and natural biopolymer, and transversal issues as: garbage, recycling, reuse, sustainability, environmental aesthetics and new technologies. As theoretical and methodological we have Kelly’s, Theory of Personal Constructs with emphasis on the Cycle of Experience is had. The hermeneutic-dialectic methodology the research’s methodology, seek refuge alteration of CHD and enables the structuring of interactive methodology/constructive, new learning tool, from proposed changes of CHD, allows you a closer cross between areas of knowledge, Art and Science. Personal Constructs that allows the simultaneous participation of all involved in the project and it grants primordial speech of freedom for the students through the spoken language and the conceptual constructions of art;collected data and allowing following the attitude and cognitive process of students. The project involves a group of 10 students from 1st year grade of high school of CODAI, institution associated to UFRPE, in the City of SAO LOURENCO DA MATA, State of Pernambuco, Brazil. The research results presents a satisfactory development from the participants and it also presents in the consensus final constructions, a very approach of the formal definition that could be found in the sciences literature as well as in the conceptual art. / Nesta pesquisa investiga-se a construção de conceitos através do material tecnológico da produção artística de Arte conceitual, em procedimento transdisciplinar com a Ciência. Verifica-se a potencialidade do material expressivo utilizado na produção conceitual da arte e na sua contribuição para a aprendizagem de conceitos científicos de alunos do ensino médio. Como materiais expressivos têm-se: o PET (Politereftalato de etileno) e um bioplástico (confeccionado pelos alunos). Esses materiais auxiliam nas discussões e construções conceituais sobre conteúdos curriculares do Ensino Médio relativos à Química dos Materiais, à Biologia e à Ecologia (meio ambiente), com o tema: polímero (sintético, naturais e biopolímero), e abordagens transversais como: lixo, reciclagem, reaproveitamento, sustentabilidade, estética ambiental e novas tecnologias. Como aporte teórico e metodológico tem-se a Teoria dos Construtos Pessoais de Kelly, com destaque para o Ciclo da Experiência. A metodologia hermenêutica-dialética fundamenta a metodologia da pesquisa. Também ampara as modificações efetivadas no círculo hermenêutico-dialético (CHD) e viabiliza a estruturação da metodologia interativo/construtiva como um novo instrumento pedagógico, eficiente tanto para construir dados em pesquisa qualitativa, quanto, como ferramenta pedagógica para construção da aprendizagem. O novo instrumento proposto a partir das modificações do CHD facilitou a aproximação transdisciplinar entre as áreas do conhecimento, Arte e Ciência, e possibilitou a participação simultânea de todos os pesquisados na mostra. Assim, envolveu: entrevistados e observadores, privilegiando a liberdade de expressão dos envolvidos através da fala e das construções e reconstruções conceituais durante as fases do instrumento. O CHD modificado viabilizou a construção dos dados da pesquisa e também facilitou acompanhar os processos atitudinais e cognitivos dos envolvidos durante a construção da aprendizagem. Foram pesquisados 10 alunos do 1º Ano do Ensino Médio do CODAI, Instituição vinculada a UFRPE situada no Município de São Lourenço da Mata, PE. Os resultados da pesquisa indicaram satisfatório desenvolvimento das construções conceituais dos participantes e mostraram nos resultados consensuais finais, muita proximidade às definições formais encontradas na literatura da área de Ciência, bem como da Arte Conceitual.

Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM) / Knowledge Management has been at the heart of mounting focus over the last several years. Research and literature on the area under discussion has grown and organizations have come to realize that success is often determined by one’s ability to create, disseminate, and embody knowledge in products and services. This realization has led to increased interest in examining the ways in which knowledge can be effectively identified, elicited, codified, distributed and retained.When an employee leaves an organization, the knowledge they possess often goes with them. This loss can potentially have a negative impact on the productivity and quality of the organization. Knowledge Management seeks to find ways to minimize loss of knowledge when an employee leaves an organization. One of the impediments that knowledge management seeks to overcome is the accepted tendency in people to hoard knowledge. People often withhold knowledge when they feel it provides them with a competitive advantage over others. The argument of this study was intended to provide the organization with an approach that it can utilize to facilitate tacit knowledge elicitation by means of the storytelling method.In keeping with Grounded theory principles, and utilising an interpretive approach, stories from Subject Matter Experts were collected and re-coded into fitting knowledge management constructs. The coding of the stories into the various knowledge management constructs was then further refined by means of expert review. Pearson’s cross correlation analysis was also used as a supporting tool to determine and validate that the collected stories were classified correctly under the knowledge management constructs. The research findings eventually demonstrated that storytelling is an effective means of eliciting tacit knowledge from experts. In addition to this, the research has inadvertently resulted in the construction of a knowledge management framework for storytelling.

The thesis focuses on advanced programming constructs and techniques of the Swift programming language. At the beginning programming paradigms that are supported by the Swift design (object-oriented and functional) are introduced. Concepts of each paradigm are described and Swift is then evaluated by the level of support for these paradigms. Following programming constructs are described in-depth: working with variables, optional types, enumerated types, functions and closures. Creating of custom operators and subscripts. Operations with protocols, generic types and parallel program execution. Error handling with throwing functions. Detailed explanation of value types and their differences from reference type is given too. Thesis also explains nested types and all higher-order functions in Swift. At the end are described extensions; specifically extension of computed property, initialization function, function, subscript, nested type and protocol and generic types extensions. In the last section of the thesis these advanced programming techniques are described; function chaining and composition, structure saving, performance optimization of value types, reflection in the Swift programming language and how modules and namespaces work. At the end protocol-oriented programming is introduced.

Rape is a serious highly prevalent crime committed every day around the world, and affects both men and women. Rape victims must report the incidence to the police, and often the police they report to are male law enforcement officers. Yet many people in South Africa, including male law enforcement officers, do not fully accept that males can be and are victims of rape. So far there has been significantly little research into the reporting of male rape. Thus a qualitative research study on the attitudes of male law enforcement officers towards male rape victims was conducted. Social constructionism was taken as a theoretical starting point to the formal literature. The formal literature itself deals with male rape, how it is perceived, understood and misunderstood by society at large and specifically, by male law enforcement officers. The myths and truths, as well as stigmas associated with male rape are also explored. The impact of gender issues such as gender identity, gender roles and gender stereotypes are explored in-depth as they contribute to attitudes held by male law enforcement officers. Six male law enforcement officers from a Johannesburg police station participated in this study. Every one of them had had a certain amount of experience in the SAPS dealing with rape and rape victims. The researcher identified themes dealing with male rape victims from the literature, and interviewed the participants according to these themes using a semi-structured and structured format. The interviews were coded and analysed in a manner that allowed the themes, which were informed by the literature, to surface from the interview data itself. This is consistent with the qualitative tradition of psychological research. It was found that, male law enforcement officers’ attitudes towards male rape victims influence the way they think about and perceive these victims. It is very likely that this influence has a negative impact on the psychological well being of the male rape victim. It was also found that many male rape victims do not report their victimisation to the police as they fear they will not be taken seriously, they will be laughed at or even ridiculed. The law enforcement officers confirm that the stigma and shame of male rape victims compound their experience, making it traumatic and nearly impossible for them to process. The researcher believes that a change in these attitudes can lead to a change in the way male rape victims are perceived and treated by law enforcement officers, as well as by society as a whole. Further study into the role of cultural beliefs concerning masculinity and gender roles in the South African context can contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon of male rape, and can be integrated into the current intervention models used to treat these victims. / Dissertation (MA (Clinical Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) or prion diseases are a class of fatal brain disorders better known as Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD) in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk. The infectious agent responsible for these diseases is a misfolded prion protein capable of catalyzing a conformational change in normal cellular prion proteins (PrPC) into aberrant disease-causing structural isoforms (PrPSc). Although the etiological agent for TSEs has clearly been defined as PrPSc, there are important gaps in our understanding of how these proteins target and invade brain tissue. It remains to be established how ingested PrPSc ultimately reach the brain and also to understand why these tissues are particularly targeted, notwithstanding that several other tissues highly express prion proteins. Certain viruses, retroviruses in particular, efficiently hijack host proteins and can carry these proteins with them when they are released from a cell. Several lines of evidence have shown that prions and retroviruses can interact and associate at various stages of the retroviral replication cycle. Of special interest is that most retroviruses can cross the blood-brain barrier and could therefore deliver host-derived proteins to neuronal cells. In view of these observations, this thesis investigates whether retroviruses can act as vectors to capture prions from an infected cell and deliver them to a susceptible target cell. In this work, I have cloned human and mouse prion cDNAs from PBMCs and the murine cell line NIH 3T3. Either a FLAG epitope tag or the eGFP reporter protein cDNA was inserted into a region of the prion cDNA that is predicted to be amenable to such genetic insertions without affecting protein folding or expression. I then confirmed using both fluorescent and confocal microscopy and that the recombinant proteins had a similar cell distribution to the endogenous prion protein. Using Western blot analysis, I then showed that endogenous and overexpressed prion proteins can be detected in co-transfected cells producing HIV and murine leukemia virus (MLV) retroviral particles. Finally, I went on to show that prions are also present at high levels in HIV and MLV retroviral particles released from these cells. This work constitutes the first step in determining whether retroviruses can act as vectors for prion dissemination. Establishing a strong and clear association between retroviruses, pathogenic prions and prion disease would provide the rationale for preventive measures to be taken directly against retroviruses in order to protect humans and animals that have been newly exposed to PrPSc-infected products or those who are genetically predisposed to develop prion diseases. Anti-retroviral drugs could also be potentially used to delay disease progression and reduce prion transmission in human and animal tissues. The availability of such a treatment would constitute a significant advancement because there is currently no cure or treatment for prion diseases.

Consisting of both theoretical and empirical inquires, this study examines the primary functions of narrative and the relationship between narrative and mental imagery. The study proposes a new framework to interpret semiotic resources. Combining this with the linguistic functional theory of Halliday (1978), a functional method to empirically investigate semiotic representations was also developed. In the empirical inquiry, the study developed a latent construct method to empirically test the effects of narrative in a real learning situation. This study is the first to investigate the functional relationship between narrative and mental imagery, and among the first to suggest a theory and empirically investigate representations of a multimodal nature. The study is also among the first to use latent constructs to investigate the learning experience in a real educational setting. Data were collected from 190 library professionals who enrolled in three sections (two in narrative and one in plain text) of an online course administered through Vista 4.0 and who completed the course and responded to several instruments. Essay data (n = 82 x 2) were analyzed using content analysis based on the narrative analysis framework developed. Quantitative data analysis methods include univariate data analysis, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling that tests the proposed model and verifies the relationships between the latent variables. Overall, the findings support the hypotheses about the functional effects of narrative identified, and narrative is found to provide a favorable and positive learning context which is tested by the proposed model of learning experience measured by several latent constructs (X2 = 31.67, df = 47, p = .9577, RMSEA = .00, SRMR = .047, NNFI = 1.05, CFI = 1.00, and GFI = .94). The results indicate that participants who enrolled in the narrative sections of the course gained higher creative scores and showed better results in performance-based and attribution-based experiences. The model testing results indicate that even though more time spent during learning led to better outcome and performance in both groups, more time spent means more satisfaction for the individuals in the narrative group, but led to less satisfaction for the individuals in the non-narrative group.

<p>he use of student-centered instructional strategies is a common practice in engineering classes. However, understanding which instructional strategies have a more profound effect on students’ performance and motivation is fundamental in course design. Such comparisons would allow instructors to design and plan their courses with better learning activities, which could lead to better student engagement and learning. In this three-paper dissertation, I explored the relative effectiveness of two instructional strategies 1) reflective thinking, and 2) teamwork participation by primarily using quantitative methods. Self-regulated learning theory and the Interactive-Constructive-Active-Passive (ICAP) framework guided the selection of these two strategies.</p><p>The first study investigated the relationship of an instructional strategy and a motivational construct through the following research questions: 1) Do students with high academic self-efficacy generate high-quality reflections? 2) To what degree do students’ self-efficacy beliefs and reflection quality scores predict their learning outcomes? Bivariate Pearson product-moment correlation and multiple linear regression were used to analyze the relationships.</p><p>In the second study, I focused on studying the relative effectiveness of two instructional strategies on a motivational construct in a larger engineering class. More specifically, the second study focused on understanding change in students’ participation in two instructional strategies (i.e., reflective thinking and teamwork) and students’ achievement goals. Further, the study investigated the unique contribution of instructional strategies on students’ academic performance and changes in achievement goals. I used stepwise hierarchical regression, simultaneous regression, and repeated measures ANOVA to analyze the data.</p><p></p><p>The third study focused on investigating the role of the same two instructional strategies on students’ academic performance and multiple motivational constructs (i.e., self-efficacy, task value, and engagement). I used structural equation modeling, and repeated measures ANOVA to analyze the data.</p>

Visual modeling concept of integrated constructs (essence) of mathematical objects in teacher training of humanistic area is presented as technology of education in problem solving. The main goal of innovative approach is student’s activity in mathematics on generating of concrete essence manifestations on concepts, methods, theorems, algorithms, procedures and so on. Such student’s activity should be: · Success in an area of actual interests and person’s experience and reached by perception; · Have high level of variability in visual modeling; · Success in domain of reflection process stimulation. Similar creative behavior of persons is typical for actors, dancing, and figure skating and so on. Now we show that such technology will be fruitful for teacher training in mathematics for humanistic specialties.

Background: Provide insights on the potential drivers of service loyalty in access-based services, especially when the consumers have the option to switch between owning a product or accessing a product through a service. By examining service loyalty in access-based services in the context of e-scooter sharing services, the researchers contribute to the service research field. Aim: Conceptualize service loyalty by considering the ownership dilemma in access-based services in micromobility. More specifically, the study aims to find what are potential drivers of service loyalty, what effects does ownership advantage have on service loyalty and what variables mediate the customer satisfaction – service loyalty relationship in said services. Methodology: A quantitative study, in which a survey method is chosen to gather empirical data. The survey was distributed as an online questionnaire via online platforms. In addition, an e-scooter sharing service company, Helbiz, shared the survey on their official Twitter and Facebook handles. A total of 249 responses was received. Findings: PLS-SEM was used as a statistical analysis tool to analyse the gathered data. Data suggests that customer satisfaction, service image, affective commitment and relative advantage are drivers of service loyalty in access-based services in micromobility. Furthermore, the effect of ownership advantage on service loyalty proved to be inconclusive as the result was not statistically significant. Finally, data indicates that service image, affective commitment and relative advantage mediate the customer satisfaction – service loyalty relationship.

Existing literature establishes a connection between elevating the status of women in less developed countries and positive political outcomes including: increased national stability, decreased likelihood of civil conflict, and international stability. In particular, the literature suggests that working within the dominant cultural framework of a country makes development projects more successful. This thesis expands upon these bodies of literature and examines the outcomes of the work of two major development agencies in Afghanistan, the UN and USAID in the area of women's education and healthcare. The thesis analyzes some specific characteristics that influence the effects of these programs in the Afghan context. It argues that when development agencies work within the unique cultural context of Afghanistan, and promote development gains for women within an Islamic framework, they are more likely to be effective than if they do not work within this framework. The thesis tests this hypothesis with a comparative qualitative analysis of the goals and accomplishes of the UN and USAID and compares the results of the analysis with survey data from The Asia Foundation Survey of the Afghan people, which provides data from 2006-2013 regarding attitudes of the Afghan people. Based on a qualitative analysis, the study's results, although tentative, identifies patterns of success using the Islamic framework.